Master's in Applied Economics vs regular MA Economics

[blueivy]

Hi,

 

so long story short I applied to a bunch of Econ MA programs and somehow got accepted to all of them. I realized much too late, however, that these programs were all theory based ones that are meant as stepping stones into top PhDs, and I don't have an interest in pursuing a PhD in Economics and would be looking for more applied economics programs. My undergraduate training used very applied economics and mathematics, which is the kind of work I enjoyed. I was accepted to good North American econ programs but i feel like an applied focus program might be better suited for me, and the only more applied program that i was accepted to (in the UK) is unaffordable. I wanted to take a year off to focus on health and personal issues since i've been having a flareup recently, so this would be for a following year hopefully at a school close to home.

I was wondering which schools would be good to pursue, and also what to expect in terms of the course coverage compared to a regular MA econ program. 

I know that McMaster has a master in applied economic policy program that seems interesting, and Dalhousie has a Master in Development Economics that I assume would be more applied. Would McGill's econ program also be applied? it's overall one of canada's top ranked schools but not very highly ranked for economics and i wonder why that is---are the programs geared towards applied work (and thus not produce as much research as theoretical programs) or is there another reason for this? Are there other good schools to consider for applied economics? I'd be interested in 1-year programs at schools where there is a focus on development, labour, health, or environmental economics in particular, in central Canada so i would be close to home.

Edited June 29, 2015 by fuzzylogician
edited for privacy at OP's request